In our introduction to this special issue, we take stock of where the anthropological literature on corruption has come and where it might go next. Our goal is neither to provide an exhaustive literature review nor to summarize the papers gathered together in this issue. Rather, we aim to identify especially promising areas in need of more focused research and analytic attention and to articulate pressing questions within those areas. Toward that end, we theorize corruption as an object of analysis by framing it as a globalized concept, the practical and social life of which anthropology is especially well suited to study. Finally, we specify how such an approach is especially helpful in disentangling the stubborn problematics that have so persistently dogged both analytic and practical engagements with corruption.